Denise Oen and Lillian Abrams

00:02 My name is Lillian mortise Abrams. I'm 65 years old. Today is March 24th, 2011. We're here in Madison, Wisconsin, and I'm talking to another former returned Peace Corps volunteer on 50. Today is March 24th, 2011. I'm in the Union in University of Wisconsin-Madison. And I am also a returned Peace Corps volunteer.

00:32 Well Denise, I just wanted to ask you what were you doing? When you were in Senegal? I was assigned to do health education. And theoretically we were supposed to work with school teachers to develop lessons on health related topics the village where I was assigned to work and was very small and the teachers there are really busy and often were traveling to their local schools didn't have a lot of time to work with me. So I found the bait but they the teachers did really want was resources. So I helped to organize a library for them. So they would have resources they could use I did that and the thing I was most successful at I think was this working with kids cuz I'm early childhood person. So we just work with kids about how did you know to be healthy how to take care of their moons. That's the real thing. So just basic hygiene or that's what I did. I felt like that was a part of my

01:32 Job, I did most successful. How big was the village when I was there. There's a couple thousand people but they have a hospital that was seen a pretty decent size. I'm traveling doctors. There is a midwife. He was there all the time. So that's a lot of work. I hung out there a lot and did what I could do to help out but they definitely were professionals and I was a 22 year old college graduate with a degree in it. So they so you didn't do an infant and maternal care and find any resentment in those cuz I know where I was we had people who did World Health and you know, young white women who are 22 years old come in and tell them how to raise their children and how to feed them. And that was not done too. Well. Yeah, you know that what you just brought up that was pretty clear like after the second day I got there. I'm like, who am I to tell all these people who have had all this training what to do?

02:32 I did do a little bit of real rate rehydration therapy training when someone from really far away from the village with didn't have access to the Midwife but saying my baby has diarrhea. What can I do and I did teach her how to make even where I was before would come and ask me. I've got a sore. I've got this. I've got a fever and we give out aspirin. Bacitracin. I mean the little things that we had at everybody did that and I think and I think that's how we were seen to as you know, you are someone who has resources as far as the knowledge we have those folks already here. We just don't have these resources. Can you hook us up with something? And what did you do in Sierra Leone? I was a teacher and I also had a frigerator. I have kerosene refrigerator. So that made me a very popular and yes, I kept things in my refrigerator for people when it was courtesy Electric in a Muslim Brotherhood and my principal used to say

03:32 I need the Nobel Peace Prize. I brought the Jews and the Arabs together because I know it wasn't because he was a Muslim Brotherhood school. We had an Arabic teacher as well as myself and I taught English and reading and he was a wonderful man and he told me I had to do five things to become a we 10-minute conversation at because we were the two Outsiders in this very small village and he said there are five things you can do to be a Muslim see if I can remember and believe there's only one God Muhammad is his Prophet give alms to the poor pray 5 times a day and make him visit to Mecca. I said I can do all those things except go to Mac. I don't know if I can make it there. He said you're Muslim so we got lucky.

04:13 So yeah, I know there was an only taught Sunday Monday. I didn't teach Friday and Saturday because I didn't eat on the Sabbath. Okay, start reading an English to Elementary Primary School will let you know I was young and didn't quite know what I was doing and we didn't I would go to the capital city and I would get from their newspaper. I get rims with the leftover rolls of newsprint. You can do it here at the Capitol times that I've done it and I'd make books for them and we put them together ahead of stapler and to teach math. We went out and collected sticks and put them in bundles of 10, you know, just do what you have to do in made dictionaries and stuff like that, but we made our own books.

05:03 Well, I grew up in Florida. So when I first came to Sierra Leone was like, oh I get it. It's tropical. I love it and everybody else was like, oh this is like, you know all their bugs there bugs in Florida and the Cockroaches just cross the street in Florida, but my real might culture shock came when I came back. I don't know about you Denise, but that's when I hit I hit culture soccer in returning. What about yourself? I just remember so clearly I went back to San Francisco and I was downtown and I was in Neiman Marcus and I was in the escalator going from like the fifth floor to the first floor and there was all this mirror and lights and glass and stuff and stuff and stuff and it was just so counter to what I had been living with I it's devastating to me that how how I felt. So alien,

06:03 In space that used to feel more comfortable than the person I used to be like in North Florida came back when we went to the Kmart and I went with my parents and I just sat down on the curb and I start talking to some little kids are around. My mother said, you know, you're back United States. You can't just talk to little children like that. Yeah. I had a hard time with readjusting from that experience more difficult than leaving here and going there.

06:39 What were your first impressions as an account? When one of the first impressions I had was we were on our way from the airport to our training City. And I one of the first children I saw between a t-shirt that said Virginia Beach soccer and I had been living in Virginia Beach when I join the Peace Corps, so I thought it was okay. I haven't really gone that far. I where we had our training. It was a kind of a dryer cuz it's sub-Saharan little drier than I was used to and I like sort of greenness. That was that was one of the things I noticed but the people were the some of these folks like in the training group were so friendly and kind and there's a pleasing aspect in Senegal that I love so I know exactly what you mean.

07:39 I'm very social and folks seem very social to me. So we were in CS it's been an hour east of Dakar. Okay, so I was in like the first groups. So I trained to 1967 Trenton Anacostia ghetto Washington DC to go to Sierra Leone and then we spent two weeks in Trinidad and but that was so inappropriate I think and if they don't do that anymore, I have no trouble underpinnings of that are problematic was very strange, but I did enjoy my time and I can't because I met some wonderful people tell me about your experience that you said mirrored my experience in Senegal that sort of abrupt cultural violent cultural thing.

08:38 Teen summer hits of pink. Yeah, right you want to talk about that first. You want me to go I can talk about it and then try to be brief. I taught in the elementary school and I would get up early in the morning and go to the school and I really I know I was at good terms with all the people around me a lift on a compound with a lot of women who were all married to the same guy cuz with a Muslim town and they were bad they're wealthy and I got up early in the morning and I saw and I was on my way to school when I saw two men one with larger than the other and one guy picked up a machette and he stabbed the other fellow in the chest when he killed him because he fell down and died and I'm assume he died and I didn't know what to do and I went on to school and later that day every I was very upset and the women who might wear my friend said don't don't worry. He was a bad man. And of course this is haunted me for years, but

09:38 One of the Rings that has haunted me one of the reasons was not only did I not do anything and I didn't know if I should have done something was in Sierra Leone and the tribe that I was with with with the chimney tribe in the village of that. I was in it was the other person's responsibility. If you saw someone being spanked or beaten or what it was your responsibility to say that's enough stop and even as a Peace Corps volunteer, I could do that. If I saw it a child being that was okay for me to interfere because it was up to us because it was his huge communal feeling and everybody was in charge and even when I was in Freetown, once my purse was stolen and I said teach manty mad at everybody went after him grabbed him. It was up to me to say stop. Don't beat him. It was my responsibility. So not only did I feel like I had shirk my responsibilities when I saw this very violent act, but I had not acted in the way that the

10:38 Village had acted that I'd seen but they had it was just very disconcerting to me then and it still isn't so that's sort of my story about that. So if you could go back what would you do?

10:55 You know, I I don't know these were two very large man, and they were about ten feet away. Maybe 20 feet away. I'd say 20 feet away from me and they were intent and there had been some trouble that I didn't know about and I didn't feel like I could interfere then and I think I might I might still feel that way. I don't know I worry about I still relive that scene in my head, but tell me what happened when I was there. There is a separatist movement the community where I was living room suite is in the south in the cosmos in that area is more tropical and has a lot of the resources the power is all up north and with a different community at the role of community has their governmental power and also, you know the merchants and sort of the farmers but the community as far as living

11:55 Had the resources but didn't have any power. So trying to separate themselves in with the country. So this move there was this movement going on and we had an apartment Indigent or which is about an hour from the town. I was living is sway the village and when we could go to this apartment just when we need to take a break up every couple weeks to go there. I'm on morning we woke up and we heard this these pops

12:23 And it was these old guns being shot at at people as well as people walking with machetes and killing people and it messes with beginning of the separatists and on and on and on and I remember like we didn't know what to do. Like what was going on in part of the thing that happened in Senegal a lot is you know, I was a child I was as 22 year old unmarried crazy blond woman and some people really protected me and protect me. They didn't tell me things like it's hard for me to know what was really going on until when I went back to the Village a couple days later. I remember just seen men walking down the roadway with machetes. So they were on their way to go fight or has just been fighting and who is coming who and I didn't know what you say about being protected. I mean, even though I

13:23 I was friends with people and I we're friends. I mean, they helped me they took care of me. They laughed at me. They laughed with me, but there was his protection aspecting and it also pointed out to me and even in retrospect that I was The Outsider that I even though I could do certain things. I mean I could teach their children and I could have them in my home and do all that and share meals with him everyday. I didn't know all the rules, right?

13:51 And it seems like you felt this had that similar. I remember often times saying I need to go to the car cuz we have to go to get her shots and stuff and it's okay and then I came to realize they knew something was going to be happening. And so it was not a good day for me to go. I had a I had a monkey because I when I was 10, I promised myself that when I was when I was seven, I promised myself when I was 10, I get a monkey when I was 10. I realized I've actually did get to beat and I thought when I was 7 and it would make myself when I was 21, I get a monkey cuz that seems like that would never happen. So when I got to Africa, I told him I want a monkey so they went out and they found me what was caught a blue ball monkey and I don't know what kind of real monkey it was, but they got me a monkey and they would laugh at me saying for a white woman. She don't have a husband. You don't have any children and he would chew gum and spit it out.

14:51 Come and visit him and then he bit me and when he bit me, I had to go to the local town, which is Port Loko and see you know, do I have rabies? What did I do? And they said well if the monkey dies then you die do tie up the monkey don't let him go and then then if he gets it come back and we'll give you the rabies shots in your stomach and everything, but let's not do that though. He died. So I had to keep him I think tied up from a couple weeks to see if you lived what he did live in by the time he was tied up and became very tame and everybody liked him. So then he didn't die. I didn't die on Titan decided to give him his freedom what he wouldn't go so but he what he did do was going to end the reason why I'm telling stories going to people's cassava plots and their little farms and eat their food. Well, that's unacceptable. So they told me about I said, what what can I do about my call? They say what you got to take care of your monkey.

15:51 And then I went away for a weekend when I came back Michael just did run away and people had protected me cuz I think they

16:01 I did away with Mike. So in that way, yeah, I was protected too and no one ever told me all he just ran away. He just ran away.

16:11 Yeah, when I had always dreamed of going back to Senegal and no I got married had children to life, you know, the way life is and then I'm one of the women in my department here at the University. Her daughter was in Peace Corps Senegal and this woman hadn't traveled really outside the US and there's no way she could go to Senegal on her own, but she said that I would go with you and it's the fall. He was my opportunity at that time that the political situation was still really not good public Peace Corps out of the area where I had been living and I looked at Lonely Planet, which is my Bible, right? And it's saying you probably shouldn't travel to be careful about going down there, but I was determined so my friend Abby and I went to the car and I went to another coffee vendors to send the street and I said, you know what I want to visit the village where

17:11 I was a volunteer and it's down the cosmic camisas. You know what you're okay right now, it's fine. So I did I just went down there and I had this fantasy the return to the Village fantasy that I would just walk into this Village that had been In Like Flint 25 years ago or 23 years ago and everyone be safe, I went to sing in the shower and then got on at you Noah Bush taxi to the village and an a scout off the bush taxi and I'm trying to find this house. I lived in so many years ago and I said where is a tiens place to someone that's so I'll take you there get to ATMs place and there is a party going on and they all looked at me. When oh my God Mariela my your back put your backpack here and hang out with us and they ended up spending five days back with all these folks in ATN brought out this photo album.

18:11 With me a 22 year old and he planted this mango tree. I'm in the compound where I used to live and he did not he was living there now and it says huge full-grown mango tree but resigned to start the story is my little brother Etienne son used to hang out with me all the time and have all these pictures of him as an eight-year-old. And now he was this grown man and he was in the military and after I hung out with the family for a little bit I traveled with him and

18:43 I see now to that was protection like they wanted me to travel with him to be safe. And there were like stops every like 10 km in the military would stop you in the dust your passport and there was the whole machine gun thing that somebody looking at your passport head machine gun. So I felt that I was being protected by the family with having Sarah Kay travel with me. And then when I was leaving the community to go back up north to meet my friends and we were in The Gambia and I was in a 7% tax to six people that I never met before my life. But of course, we're in a little teeny, you know, the poem poem we've gotten stuck at the ferry that was ours and we think we'd all been together like 11 or 12 hours in parentheses stop in The Gambia and it's dark and late and the guard comes with the flashlight and everyone in the car says height.

19:43 Stop playing hide and trying to hide that doesn't work. And so the flashlight Shines on my face and I think they pulled me out of the car and the guard asked me to come out and so I go into the guardhouse and the person they are at the guard sort of doing that teasing thing. But you know, what are you doing here? And you know, I like your dress and you know that whole thing about asking for something. I like you're just like all I'm really glad you like my dress when it has a little brother. I will give it to you to know, you know, my wife would really like that dress. You just keeps doing this thing and I'm feeling very uncomfortable. And finally he sort of lets me go so I can I'm done with you when I get back to the car and ever in the car. Like are you okay and can happen if you know I was fine and I know I knew how to do the teasing thing and I knew when to say, you know, really I'm kind of done but again I felt so protected I felt

20:43 Protected that you know, Sarah Kay traveling with me. So I'd be safe. I felt protected like in the car and like people trying. To hide me and then you know when I was gone, they were worried about me but I thought the best they could do but yeah that the experience of feeling like even though as an outsider that people care of because that's what you do the people look up if you're the stranger. I really think one thing that I don't know how it is in Senegal or how it is in other parts of West Africa, but I'm kind of curious again. I everything is specific to where I was in Sierra Leone in the chimney Tri ethnic group. It isn't talking to former volunteer friend of mine about this.

21:32 It is traditional that you say Momo, which is thank you.

21:40 Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for nursing your baby. One more one more call my mom or working mom or anything you're doing and it's like it's it's as if you are thinking that person for being for existing that is such a wonderful wonderful tradition. And you know, they always said thank you for teaching everyday. Thank you for teaching. Thank you for walking every single day. And I mean it was thank you for cooking. But you know, thank you for pounding the rice. Thank you for teaching me a thank you. Thank you. Thank you, and I just wondered if where you were they also had that tradition of live want someone had given just given birth ever many people would come to think that person. I wonder if that happened this something interesting. There is a word for thank you best not used very often because there was a sign idea that course we would do this.

22:40 There is a response if you do say thank you in the local the translation means we all share it you don't need to thank me. Cuz I already said yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but I just love that idea. We all share it recently very recently. We had my husband who I met in Peace Corps who I married if we had a he had a fort of 43rd. I don't know reunions in South Carolina with a goal of people are descendants of Sierra Leone. It's very exciting and we went to Sullivan Island and the national parks man outside of Sullivan Island where the slaves have come from West Africa, and they were Sierra leoneans and

23:28 And we all stood there and he said look across the Atlantic Ocean. He said, you know hundreds of years ago. They came the other way and you went the other way and he said thank you and a friend of mine said he said it in the chimney way. Thank you for being thank you for doing and it was so moving for us because it was that to the following conferencing. Thank you. It wasn't specific. It was existence and it was really a recognition to of that long journey that we had all made that they had made it across the Atlantic for the enslaved people had made it across to Sullivan Island. That was very moving.

24:12 But thank you.

24:17 I'm wondering if we could go back a little bit to your experience and Senegal Denise. And I don't know if you can share may be a particularly difficult moment you had about a particularly difficult moment a challenging. I think a lot of this is a big Peace Corps story to like the Peace Corps accident. I was in a taxi going to Dakar it was it was actually a van taxi and there's all sorts of different to see you know, how many people can get into a vehicle this like a 15-person van and they left really early in the morning like 4:00 in the morning. So I got to go through TSA and got into the sand and I was sort of asleep and I was shaken awake awake just in time to see that the van was swerving off the road to

25:17 Void a bicyclist but end up hitting a bicyclist the van flipped over in the next thing. I remember I was just laying like away from the van and these women were saying around the gonna lie lie lie be like like oh my god what happened? And so one of the women that was in the van had had a baby. She had baby at the baby was okay, but she was like, I think she didn't come back in the van. So I don't know if she was dead and they left her there or I don't know what happened to her butt.

25:51 We another van came to get us and we've got into that van and I held This Woman's baby on the way back to sing in the shower. I didn't remember having glass in my hands and glass and I was holding the baby and every time I would hold the babies if they would have keep the baby, you know foods like it would just make the glass like cutting to me and it would make me think of this baby's mom and I was like one of the hardest things cuz like does not quick fixes when you're there and let them fix it is like no there's never no new what happens to Mom. And that's the thing that haunts me like your story that I still think about what happened, you know, what happened to the baby to I don't know when you got to where you going to church

26:51 Yessiree it wrong. Then we went to the hospital cuz there's a bigger hospital and they took care of everyone and I don't remember how I contacted another I volunteer and then get into the taxi, but another volunteer went with me we got on a plane and we flew to the car and then I was given medical attention. Right? Well, I'm about to become a piece for a story to write but I think like a hard time because they are hard times here often times. The fixes to asked in the fixes aren't fast for hard times when you're there and I was only there for a while and some people that's just like their life all what time is it? Right? Right, right.

27:42 Did you speak the language or is it French with a French the lingua Franca French is like the official language and that's what you would learn in school.

27:52 Then the different cultural groups speak language learning their language wolof for is the primary language. So I learn to speak Enough full off to to get by pretty. Well actually I was pretty fluent in that and then the community where I was living with sweetie people spoke Jolla, so I learn to speak Jolla enough to get by to I pretty much can talk to anybody in any language body language in but yeah, so those are the three languages are used when I was there. How about you? Well with the former British colony and I lived in the area Creo is the lingua Franca. What was the language of the slaves that came from Britain freed freed slaves from Britain came to Sierra Leone is what I found it. It just like the American slaves went to Liberia.

28:44 So the Creole is a Patois, I guess. I don't know what the what the right way to say it but but the children spoke to me we had too many training and it was okay. I wasn't real good. But I was teaching English though. Everybody want to see you talking to me. So so that was you know, you did that. We try not to use Creole too much rather would speak, Tennessee or English.

29:18 Connect to the accident story that Denise how did that change you I mean it was a hard time. That's one of the ways that it changed me was say I discovered like it and need that I I thought I could help fell but feel so bad accidents are really common on the roads aren't in good condition. And there's likely drive around the room tonight and a lot of times when they're I'm News accident there. Is this a taxi driver that's their right cuz he's driving the car and I thought okay. This would be really great if the taxi drivers had first-aid training, so I came up with a plan to try to deliver first aid training to the text drivers. So I felt like that experience.

30:08 Is the seeds for something I could do that would fit needed to be doing that hadn't been done before that. I could actually do instead of something that I really didn't have the training to do so that

30:26 We have about 10 minutes left and then you can we go back to your story about witnessing murder, and maybe she could just reflect on.

30:37 What changed maybe I think I answered? I'm not sure.

30:42 I realize the cultural differences within people you think you're you think you're accepted. You think you're doing really great. You're getting along with everybody. You have friends. You're doing your job and has its ups and downs.

30:55 But I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what the right thing to do was and

31:02 I think that gray area where you don't know the right thing to do.

31:07 That his that changed me because you know what? I went into peace guys pretty sure of myself. I'm going to go save the world.

31:16 But and I didn't understand I was protected and I didn't really like you were talked about the people protecting you didn't really understand afterwards after was over and I talked to my friends about I think you know, this is what I saw in the morning and they said oh, don't worry. He was a bad man.

31:35 They were protecting me. I don't know what the real story was. I but but what really changed me was the understanding how strong culture is how much of an outsider I was I didn't want to be an outsider. I mean

31:52 I wanted to be I wanted to be one of them. That was my overriding feeling. Oh, no, did you feel that that you want that outside or in this and I thought that gray area just go to sleeping in.

32:06 I thought it was always interesting to me. There is times when I felt like oh, yeah, I am I blonde hair like yours my family and I'm doing the things that people in the community do and you know feeling really comfortable and then I'd be somewhere in some of the play to pop which is playing French slang for a doctor because often times the only white people people wouldn't see in Senegal would be at the doctor the French doctor that came in some like come on, you know, I'm one of you which of course I'm not but yeah, I remember that that feeling but that gray area. I think it's I think I thought about a lot then and now it's like my foot's not need a place or it's in both places at the same time. And is that awareness of culture?

33:06 That huge awareness of cultural differences that you can't quite cross. You don't you think you're speaking the language, but you're not speaking the language and it's a cultural language as well.

33:19 One thing I've always wanted to ask people this but you know when I was in Sierra Leone witness people going to childbirth. I'm sure you didn't and nurse their babies and everything and consequently when I came home and got married and had my first child I was so at home with nursing a baby look like I need a class for this. Yeah, they had a class until I was such a militant breastfeeder are unlike I am breastfeeding everywhere all the time and you will be the person who tells me you know, what there's a room in the back. That's really nice to know ya exactly. That was a really sore desensitize you and it was a good thing. Like this is the only way that was it both kids for a really long time.

34:19 Protection kids got really sick once they stop breastfeeding. So I don't know how how it is. Now. I'm hoping it's better things to do in the health education field Vicino trying to combat this, you know, the really good healthy thing to do is Formula or Nestle coming in I say use the you know, the new thing when breastfeeding you so much better. So I was just always a big, you know cheerleader for that. Like I'm breastfeeding is so awesome. Like I'm gonna really, you know, breastfeeding is really great in the states. That's what people do and that's what I'm going to do and I'm excited that a lot of Catholic Services had a bad Catholic school there too as well as the Muslim Brotherhood school and Catholic Services would send the powdered milk and there was a huge amount of it was never used but I was there long before you so that like creeped in yet.

35:20 Well, I can talk to anybody and once I became a culturally aware, one of the things they didn't Sierra Leone in this particular tribe ethnic group was they filed the distance between the teeth in our country. We put braces to pull the teeth together. So it was another cultural thing. That was so an opposition. You know, I don't know if you saw those things, so I should have bought brought an awareness of those differences in all the things and now

36:05 I don't know. I I see things I see I see things that were culturally good or what what I thought was good. There should have crossover. There's all this, you know fluidity among cultures and I become more aware of that. Yes. I love your use of fluidity cuz I am all about Asia like a huge like blending of cultures that's always going on and I'm celebrating that I know specifically that a couple practices that I brought back and you were saying about, you know, give me along with everyone in Senegal. If you went into room people you would discreet everyone say Cameron's hands and just acknowledged like I'm so glad you're here and I can you know, I've continued to do that and that's what I do and sometimes he surprised by the little bit but then seemed to really like it and also the handshake were if it's someone who's really like a leader you do the

37:05 Handshake email ahold you know that you're their hand in both your hands cuz they're such a valued person and their hand is so heavy. It takes two of your hands to hold it and I still do that when I'm feeling that feeling and I've noticed people they get it. You know that they might look a little surprised that I'm like. Oh, okay. She's reviewing me. I've done that and the other thing that I loved and Senegal when you be traveling and you just stopped and people would sell things and someone would buy a bag of Beignets and they'd open the bag of Beignets and pass them around with everyone in the car coolant. Do I know when a child hold a gun any kind of public transportation if I open something to eat? I have to poop around me two months how people look at you for a second like what and then like to be great. So that's how I do think people cuz I understand that I understand that thank you. It's a little doesn't really fit in here but means a lot to me.

38:05 I'd love that Momo.

38:16 Sullivan Island, the people that the park ranger thanked us that was what he thanked us and no one had ever formally done that and when I was certainly in Sierra Leone people, thank me all the time. Thank you for teaching and all thank me for 4 no sweeping my porch. They laughed at me. So, you know what they say. Thank you for for everything that I did and could do and

39:01 That was important. I mean if you if whatever you did for someone if you saw us if they saw someone braiding somebody's hair. I don't know. Did you have many people to remind me of hair when I was in Sierra Leone the only person I saw that time now trying to this is more than 40 years ago. The only people with dreadlocks with people who couldn't take care of their hair and they were usually schizophrenic and I didn't see anyone with dreadlocks. It was until the mid-80s wear dreadlocks became popular and people wear them but at first it was like an Abrupt like oh my goodness it because when we saw people with dreadlocks with people who couldn't take care of themselves and you know, there was like that was another thing there the mentally ill or taking care of the FED. They were housed. Someone was always there for them. They they, you know, they weren't abandoned again. We all share it like their community.

40:01 Do take care of everybody and I saw that a lot there and people like you said to have people that are mentally ill folks. They act that. I had member of the community set, you know, you know Muhammad has this or that going on and you know, we're taking care of it just the feeling of that Community. I remember I was I would be walking around or taking a walk or whatever and I would see a woman who I knew and I knew she had had a baby like 6 months ago and all the sudden. She's with a newborn I said momokun right and I see how can you add a newborn you just had a 6 months 6 months ago you and stay with it. Oh, yeah, it's possible. That's how we are. But of course it wasn't it wasn't her baby with her sister's baby who had gone but

41:01 That kind of thing was very common to give your dick you are nursing mother to exchange it with your sister and sister is a loose. Lucy means cousin second cousin your friend. Anybody can be your sister or your mother too. So that was really interesting. But I love you and I don't know anybody who would do that give their child to know it was just commonly done. I love the way the kids were all the community kids. They're just gave up trying to figure out who all the kids belong to cuz I realize they belong to everybody meet at a certain amount of time. I did figure out okay, these kids are with this family, but only in one way cuz they were communal kids. So yeah, I like that idea like that and I think you can see in the African American community in this country to that caring that is a special type of thing.

42:02 People aren't quite so isolated in Africa and then or alienated I don't think that's a problem for them. And I don't think I don't know. It seems like that the African American tradition as well. I think this idea of the collective is definitely expanding here as as as as a nation come more diverse and and I are going to be political events at the capital of the past month. And I think that's something that we started seeing ourselves or might like my little four person family. It's about this whole community and I think that's been an Awakening here, right? And then just the eye and N2, I mean that loose understanding. Oh, he's my brother. She's my sister. This is my sister. It doesn't have to be your blood sister. It doesn't mean that you're born from and so even when you're in the Capitol you talk about solidarity and they're talking about we're brothers.

43:02 Sister as we're here together. I mean it is that sort of continuation of that the community feeling but something else while you're out there in the snow and you know it together. He scored two obvious about it working on this project, but just being in those spaces with all those people that were pulled together by a couple common beliefs as opposed to we're all in our little house and doing our own little right, right, right. We got out. We got at all this weekend.

43:48 Are there any clothing. So, do you want to share?

43:55 I don't know. I didn't ask you why you joined but I know I joined because I'm so old is I joined because when I was 16 John F Kennedy gave his speech and said ask not what you can do for you what you ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country and I took it right to heart and there's a book written in his cause Kennedy's children and I really do identify with that. So yeah, well similarly my maternal grandmother Irish Catholic woman every single room of the entire house at a crucifix and a picture of John Kennedy every single room every single room. And so that was a result of my one of my founding things in my brain. And the other thing in my brain is my father who is career military and so you need to serve your country and I was opposed to the war in Vietnam with still raging and so but it was in my brain.

44:54 Need to serve my country. So it just made sense to Peace Corps Peace Corps Africa. That was just always at that's why I wanted to serve and and ended up happening. So but yeah, I was little I mean, I would probably stay 10. I knew I was going to do the PS4 and I was going to go to Africa. I went where they sent me and I'm really glad I went and I encourage everyone to go. Yeah, I really do. I really encourage people to join.